Developments in the world of private for-profit global higher ed

Baltimore, Maryland, July 8, 2008 – Laureate Education, Inc. today announced it has acquired the Universidad Tecnológica de México (UNITEC), one of the largest private universities in Mexico, and the Universidad Latina and Universidad Americana (UAM) in Costa Rica.

UNITEC has eight campuses throughout Mexico, including six in Mexico City, one in Guadalajara and one in Monterrey. The university has a 40-year tradition of providing higher education throughout the country, and today serves more than 36,000 students….

Universidad Latina, the largest private university in Costa Rica, was founded in 1989 and has more than 16,000 students. The university is widely recognized for its health sciences programs, including medicine and dentistry. UAM, founded in 1997, has more than 4,000 students, and specializes in business education. Combined, the schools have 13 campuses throughout Costa Rica.

Mr. Edelstein, 48, has more than 20 years of experience as a strategic and financial advisor. He joins Apollo Group from Credit Suisse, where he served as a Managing Director and headed the Global Services Group within the Investment Banking Division, as well as the Chicago investment banking office. Mr. Edelstein founded and oversaw Credit Suisse’s leading advisory practice in the education industry, where he served as advisor to many of the largest education companies, including Apollo Group.

Finally, the Wall Street Journalnoted, today, that Marcus Brauchli, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal (now owned by Rupert Murdoch) will become the Washington Post’s new executive editor. The formal press release is here.

But the Post has been struggling with the same forces that have devastated the newspaper industry in recent years — defections of readers and advertisers to the Web. Over the past 24 months, the paper’s weekday circulation has dropped 7.1% to 673,180, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Print-ad revenue fell 13% in 2007, according to the Post. While Washington Post Co. has been somewhat insulated from the impact of these changes by its profitable Kaplan education business, the paper has lately taken steps to cut costs. It eliminated more than 100 newsroom positions, bringing the total newsroom count to about 700 from its peak of more than 900 in 2003. Some staffers worry that further cuts are coming.

These three news items are lenses onto three related development patterns:

The extension of private higher ed networks into new ’emerging market’ geographies via the acquisition of private universities (in the case of Laureate).

Financialization, with institutions of for-profit private higher ed reaching into the calculative networks that enable global higher ed value chains to be designed and brought to life (in the case of Apollo).

Given the scale of education services on offer via Laureate, Apollo, and Kaplan – over 2 million students being served right now – these news items and development patterns are worth taking note of.

2 thoughts on “Developments in the world of private for-profit global higher ed”

I have recently come across global higher ed as a source for trands and insights into higher education in general and global higher ed specifically.

Your recent reports on the consolidation of education, the tayloristic onslaught, and the massification of education are rather frightening. Long have I cherished the value of liberal arts education and I fear that this trend toward only profitable models (rather than balanced models) are going to push education to the point of providing only instrumental value rather than insturmental and intrinsic educational value. Would you like some fries with that degree?